I’m pretty sure either Billie or Mary also called the other a slut at some point. Far from being a sign of prudery, it looks to me like “harlot” was Willis just running out of synonyms for “someone who’s had more sex than I have”.

The most incredible part of this to me is that those two women are engaging in some kind of climactic verbal deathmatch where they finally work off the intense hatred they have for each other in a zero-sum game that only ends when one or the other’s reputation is utterly trashed… and it’s all ostensibly about one of them having had sex and the other one having had a beer.

See, you’re just playing into it – Mary’s a terrible person but being a “hoebag” isn’t the reason why. In fact she isn’t even actually a “hoebag”, by any definition of the term where it’s a synonym for “slut” or “whore”.

So what if Billie has had sex and is a recovering alcoholic (who, despite having multiple beers thrust at her, is holding one that is still closed, as she said)? Neither of those things is relevant. The real question: Is Billie the type of person who would make up or exaggerate stories just to hurt another person and get them in trouble? No. Is Mary? Fuck, yes.

Also. Is Roomies!Billie even an alcoholic? I know she really enjoyed her drinking, but I don’t recall a detox and she’s had a relatively easy time resisting temptation so far. She doesn’t scream “addict,” recovering or otherwise, to me.

That’s more a result of young Willis not having a clue what actual unhealthy, self-destructive drinking looked like and how it differed from “drinking with friends”, or what it actually took to recover from that beyond “Earnest desire to be a god-fearing person” than that not being the intention, as far as I can tell.